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EA and Transgaming join forces.

EA to revamp Mac games library
Games and Entertainment
By Mark Raby
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 10:04

Redwood City (CA) - Electronic Arts has announced that it will bring a handful of its PC game titles to the Mac, and promises to offer simultaneous releases on both platforms in the future.

This summer, EA will bring Command & Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to the Mac OS X platform for the first time.

The new Mac-centric initiative comes from a new partnership between EA and TransGaming, a technology firm specializing in software portability engines.

TransGaming's most recent development, the Cider engine, makes it much easier for programmers to port PC applications to the Mac. Cider "will dramatically decrease the time it will take to bring EA's hit portfolio of games to a thirsty Mac market," said TransGaming CEO Vikas Gupta in a GamesIndustry.biz quote.

EA said it will bring more catalog PC titles to the Mac in the months to come. In addition, the upcoming releases of EA's Madden NFL 08 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 will be released for the Mac and PC on the same day.

*poster's note* Now this could be good news for linux users as Cider and Cedega are close kin. We could see big compatibilty updates with Cedega in the near future.

Summary:
The "wizard of id" John Carmack unleashed his brand new engine on the Mac population, which he claims will bring the art of game building right down to the pixel level.

Full Text:

By Eugene Huang

According to a report GamePro posted just a handful of weeks ago, id CEO Todd Hollenshead revealed to the media that his company was working on an all-new franchise powered by an all-new engine -- the development of which would be headed up by none other gaming guru John Carmack. Although the company has so far kept a lid on all information regarding the brand new franchise, the engine itself was presented just yesterday at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The company calls it id Tech 5, and hopes that it will introduce new meaning to the term "scope". In a written statement, the company makes the claim that the engine "will power games that contain vast outdoor landscapes that are completely unique to the horizon, yet have indoor environments with unprecedented artistic detail."
image courtesy of Engadget

Given that the engine debuted at an Apple conference, it came as no surprise that the engine would be demonstrated in real time on a Mac. What did surprise conference-goers, however, was the fact that a number of developers within the company seem to have "gone Mac", and will, perhaps, "never go back".

"Since many developers at id have made the switch to the Mac for their personal use, we decided it was now time to bring our core game technology to OS X," stated Carmack during his demonstration, also adding that "the latest Macs are the fastest systems in [their] offices" during certain processing tasks.

However, the company made sure to announce that, in addition to Mac OS, id tech 5 will also be supported on PCs, PlayStation 3s, and Xbox 360s.

id also plans to present the engine to captive audiences at the E3 Media & Business Summit this July, but by appointment only.

id also plans to present the engine to captive audiences at the E3 Media & Business Summit this July, but by appointment only.

One wonders if they'll show it at QuakeCon- if so, it's a good reason to be there (well, seeing some of the bleeding edge stuff as well as the casemods are a good enough reason to be there if you're in the area... ).

Not sure if they would show it at Quakecon, but one would have to think that EA is going to start using or at least offer OpenGL versions of their engines as it would simplify the porting process which would be good news for the linux community as well.

Not sure if they would show it at Quakecon, but one would have to think that EA is going to start using or at least offer OpenGL versions of their engines as it would simplify the porting process which would be good news for the linux community as well.

Well, if they want to target PS3, they will...

I'm sure that any title on PS3 will be able to be ported to Linux- anything PS3 is going to either have an identical API or a good enough analog in hand so that a port is going to be a relatively straightforward process. It would be more of a matter of the publisher being interested in doing a Linux version or allowing a studio/porting interest to do a Linux version if they're not interested in doing it themselves.